Do you still use Teflon pans? I do. And junior year, when my roommate showed me a poster she made to warn women about mercury in fish, I said, “It looks good — but I don’t buy it.” I guess I’m lucky I’m not expecting.

After years of headlines on the danger of global warming, the lack of danger of global warming, humans being cloned in Korea and proclamations that “a low-fat diet does not cut health risks, report says” — as The New York Times reported yesterday — it is easy to dismiss news about science, health or engineering as noise. So, I keep cooking my breakfast in a carcinogenic frying pan. Surely, there is a better way.

Most Stanford media consumers, not having personal subscriptions to Nature, are left at the mercy of The New York Times and the Discovery Channel for their science news. While scientists operate in a world of probability distributions and significant figures, journalists tend to focus more on differences in policies and significant viewpoints — which may be politically relevant but, scientifically, are statistical outliers. What’s key for readers is to avoid losing in translation what is scientific consensus and what are relevant new developments.

And, professionals in scientific fields will admit, that isn’t always easy.

Dr. Victor Henderson, professor of health research and policy and of neurology and neurological sciences at the School of Medicine, said that there is a tendency for the media and its consumers to seize on new studies — but, there are qualities in stories readers can look for to distinguish important information from hype.

Henderson suggested paying attention to whether conclusions are drawn from observation or experiment, and that readers should put more faith in experimental studies — like the low-fat diet study reported on in The Times. He also suggested differentiating between absolute risk and relative risk, as well as paying attention to the presentation of statistics. What does that mean? Stanford men, if you hear that erectile dysfunction occurs in 40 percent of males, you probably don’t have to worry — at least for a while. A large percent of those who experience ED may be over 60, or 70 or 80.

But even with a well-received experimental study, just reading the headlines can lead you astray. For example, much to my dismay, I can’t now go eat sharp cheddar cheese in endless quantities with the scientific and medical communities’ blessing. Buried more than halfway through The Times’ article is the distinction that while low-fat diets may not be the key to better health, many are persuaded that a diet low in saturated fat will keep you trucking — even though this hypothesis has yet to be tested in a clinical trial.

Finally, readers should look for consensus among the scientific community as a good way to guard against putting too much faith in unaccepted or untested advice.

So, if it’s this easy to differentiate good science from bad science, why do many professionals feel that media coverage of science causes public ideas to deviate so far from scientific consensus?

Enter politics and paradigms.

According to Stephen Schneider, a professor of biological sciences and senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies — and an oft-quoted voice on climate change issues, the answer may have much to do with professional differences. (The material for this column, and more of Schneider’s perspectives on science and the media can be found in the “Mediarology” section of his Web site, http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu.)

While Henderson says that in his experience science writers take care to communicate nuances of scientific findings, this is often obscured in shorter news pieces. For Schneider, this risk is accentuated in coverage that mixes science and politics, where the journalistic mantra of covering both sides of a story often takes little care to distinguish between mainstream and minority views.

Many scientists blame this journalistic paradigm for the current state of the public debate over climate change. While the vast majority of the scientific profession accepts anthropogenic climate change as a reality, much of the public believes the jury is still out, as journalists continue to report the divergent claims of politicians and advocates. The media often fails to add that there is no longer much debate on this issue among professionals.

How else would The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper with the second-highest daily circulation in the United States, be able to editorialize, as it did on January 19, that “no proof exists that lower emissions reduce global warming” and “[t]he idea that human activity influences climate change one way or another is far from proven, given the overwhelming role nature itself plays in atmospheric changes”?

When science coverage meshes with political coverage, arguments can gain more sway in public opinion than they may have in the scientific community. Despite continued talk of nuclear power being the key to America’s dependency on foreign oil, the engineers of the world haven’t shifted their research agendas, because oil is overwhelmingly used for transportation and nuclear power for electricity. Ethanol probably wouldn’t be as big of an issue, either, if the central United States weren’t filled with government-subsidized corn.

Let the reader beware. Paying attention to where science ends and politics begin, as well as using a critical eye in evaluating breaking science stories, will leave you with less noise and more news. And that’s good, because if I still set aside all science news as a temporary fad, I’d be eating far too many tuna omelets.

Jen Graham is a co-terminal student in environmental engineering and a former Daily editor. E-mail her at jag05@stanford.edu if you have worries other than Teflon and The Wall Street Journal.